Читать книгу Damned - E. S. Dorrance - Страница 5

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Close to five o’clock the decrepit vehicle which, with a dingy hearse, had formed the funeral cortège of Trevor Trent, creaked to a stop. The entrance to the Heartsease Apartments gaped wide, just as it had gaped a few hours earlier when the remains of the wastrel had passed through for the last time. The relic of a Jehu, in crinkled topper and faded blue livery sans buttons, lowered rheumatically from his seat on the box. Adjusting his soiled dickey, mainstay of a celluloid collar and green tie, he threw open the door with what might have been taken for extra ceremony, had he not verbally urged his passengers to hurry lest he miss the hot free-lunch which, with the weak prohibition-time “suds” that washed it down, was the most pleasureable event of his day.

Those who alighted stood a moment in regretful silence—two typical Harlem matrons, one with a child in arms, both with offspring attached like lead weights to their skirts. Between them was the girl whom they were seeing to-day, through the goggles of sensation, in the stellar rôle of chief mourner.

“Pore thing—pore young thing!”

Their tears, more or less sincere, vied with those of the dripping heavens, although not tears for Trevor Trent. Indeed, they who had known his life for the past seventeen years had no apologies, even to the angels, for omitting to weep over his demise. Their toil-dulled compassion went out in this loneliest moment that succeeds a death to the orphaned daughter who, hitherto, had been a detached unit in their congested midst. A substantial escort, they ushered her up the steps, unheeding the querulous welcome of the young hopefuls left at home.

“Was it a long, good, joggly ride, Ma?”

“You mighta tooken us along.”

“Can I go next time anybody dies? ’Tain’t fair the baby gets all the fun.”

Inside the door, the manner that belonged to an occasion was unceremoniously doffed. Sympathy along this particular block of the East One-Hundreds never interfered with life’s practicalities. Dolores Trent received no invitations to sup with her neighbors—expected none, since any superfluous scraps could be served very well for breakfast.

Uneasy in the emptiness of the three rooms which for so long had represented home to her, she settled at the oak desk beside the window with intent of searching the close-printed want columns of an evening paper. But at first she could not see to read.

In this chair her father had struggled over the translations from which their livelihood had been eked in those better moments when the drug to which he was addicted would permit him to work. That, of course, was before he had lost the position through inaccuracies which made the firm intolerant of trying her as substitute. In the corner to the right squatted the couch upon which he had wasted into that pallid, unresponsive thing so lately consigned to the ground, despite her terrified efforts to stay his departure and to recall him, once he had gone. How strange, how confusing to be alone, like a flower cut from its bush and thrown to the wind! It seemed as though she, too, must wither and die.

Over him toward the last had come a change which already was dear to her memory. Always gentle with her, intermittently zealous in an ambition to train her mind for some worth-while future, he had become obsessed by an anxiety over her which dulled him to the crave for poppy paste, hitherto his controlling love and hate. It was something to remember that, improvident though he had been in life, paupered though he was leaving her, his distress over her fate in these last days had conquered his desire for the drug. In the dusk, his last words seemed again to rasp in her ears.

“You have beauty and innocence, my girl. Please God a good young love may protect you on your way!”

Although her eyes burned, no tears relieved them. Although her heart near burst with longing to assure him how, above other children, she had been grateful for his affection, no whisper passed her lips. She could not reach him now. Merely pitiful was her regret over the diffidence which had kept her from telling him that, from her earliest understanding, she had recognized his right to resent her; had appreciated, on that very account, his tolerance.

But she must not regret. That would weaken her when most she needed strength. Had she not done the best she could? In her life-long defense of his habit, in the protectorate over him which had been her chief concern from childhood to this early maturity, had she not shown him that she worshiped him for forgiving the crime she had committed in being born—in making that brutal exaction of a life for a life?

The poppy paste she never had criticized, realizing that it had entered his life at the beginning of her own, when the young mother who had died to give her birth lay stark, for the first time unresponsive to his adoration. On that first night of her existence, as often he had told her, he had chosen her name as a sort of epitaph. Grief.... Grief.... That was what she had meant to him.

His improvidence she could not contemn, remembering the brilliant career which, before her advent, had appeared to be opening before him. Despite her lonely childhood, despite the endurance which had filled her time in lieu of laughter and play, she was glad now that always she had known. With the full hurt of her heart she hoped that, if he had not understood in life, he knew to-night that always—always—she had known.

Darkness had taken possession of the room.

A thought that darkness possessed her prospects also caused her to light the gas. She must not stumble into the future. She must cease looking backward; must turn and face forward. Determinedly she settled to the “Help Wanted” columns, a hopeful array.

However, as she read through one after another of the advertisements, down one column and up the next, the confidence inspired by their numbers decreased. She had not expected at once to sight an opportunity in which she might utilize the somewhat haphazard learning with which she was equipped. But she had hoped for something—something she could do.

And then:

WANTED—Pretty, young girl of innocent type. No experience necessary. Good pay to right person. Apply Wednesday, 10:30 A.M., to Vincent Seff, —— Fifth Avenue.

In small type, with the reserve of opportunity, it stood out from the rest. Dolores re-read it. “No experience necessary.” That was the kindest thing said to her since the cry of her father’s late-born anxiety: “You have beauty and innocence, my girl.” The advertisement seemed addressed to her.

As if in period to or amusement over her conclusions, there sounded a gurgle from the gas meter. The vapor flickered; sputtered; went out. Funerals, even in the East One-Hundreds, are expensive. And the slot of the meter never would have mistaken the single five cent piece remaining in her purse for the quarter that was its exaction. In darkness Dolores retired.

As she lay in her narrow white-iron bed, she saw in the gloom, even more clearly than under the jet, that the want-ad was meant for her. The signature had possessed, from first glance, a familiar look. Vincent Seff ... Vincent Seff.... Could she have heard that name before?

With the first ray of gratuitous daylight, recognition flooded her mind. Of course. Why shouldn’t it look familiar, that name? Often had she glanced at it when waiting around the corner to safeguard her father home from the publishing house. In letters of brass, hammered into an ebony plate, it identified the most alluring windows along that highway of lures:

VINCENT SEFF

LINGERIE

So there was work to be had at “good pay” handling those costly, cobwebby under-garments which she, although widely separated from them by circumstances, had paused passionately to admire. So the proprietor of that house of dear delights he was who wished to employ her, “without experience,” if only she proved pretty and innocent enough!

Even after dawn “10:30 A. M.” seemed far distant. But there was much to do toward vacating the flat. Already the landlord had given her grace of three days and the new tenants were “moving in.” Everything of value had gone to the pawnbroker over on Lenox Avenue. The remnant of furniture would be called for during the forenoon by the junk man who had advanced her money for the funeral.

The Trevor Trent alligator suit-case, its original claims to distinction contested by the years, she had retained for her wardrobe and keepsakes. This, when packed, she carried across the hall and left, “to be called for,” with one of yesterday’s emergency mourners. After neatly sweeping the floors as a wordless return for the un-landlordly lenience shown her, she stood for one last moment on the threshold of the living-room. Although no sound escaped her, there rose from heart to quivering lips the wail of the young animal bereft at once of parent and home.

Down at the corner a subway entrance suggested. The estate of Trevor Trent was closed, his last obligation honorably met. In the purse of his sole heir lay her legacy, enough to carry her swiftly and at ease to the neighbor-hood of her promised employment—promised to her by Vincent Seff. She took out the lone coin and started for the entrance.

An old friend, the Italian fruiterer, who yesterday had eyed her with the impressionability of his race, stopped her to press into her hand a luscious-looking, out-of-season nectarine. Dolores tried to thank him, but choked on the words. She decided to walk downtown. Without a clink, her nickel slid into the coin-box at the corner of his cart, as if fearful of being considered payment for this and other of his kindnesses since her little girlhood. Dolores, too, was fearful. She hoped the flush on her wontedly pale face hadn’t made him suspect. At the corner she glanced back. The old friend waved to her. Happily he had not heard; had not seen.

Ten-fifteen.

Somewhat winded, she hurried her already stiff pace at the warning of the church-tower clock on the cross-street just above the lingerie establishment. The outer doors were wide open and through the inner ones of plate glass she could see gracefully dressed women clerks shaking out and arranging their flimsy wares with a nice regard for effect. As yet there looked to be no customers. But then, as Dolores reminded herself, Vincent Seff’s was an ultra-fashionable shop. The fine ladies destined to wear his creations scarcely would be stirring beneath their satin and eider-down at ten-fifteen A. M.

She was there. But even Father Time could not bully her into entering at once. She found herself palpitating with the uneasiness of one who, for the first time, offers her services for wage. Three times she approached the door before her courage bore her through.

Down the aisle a fashion-plate of a man stepped out to meet her.

“May I direct mam’selle?”—he, in unctuous voice.

On realizing that she had been taken for a customer, Dolores’ spirits lifted. She glanced hopefully down at her threadbare blue serge suit. That daybreak pressing must have rejuvenated it more than she had thought.

“I came in answer to this.” She produced the want-ad.

Insult was added to the floor-walker’s obvious sense of injury when a woman clerk, elaborately coiffed, made comment from the nearest counter:

“You might have guessed her as the one last victim for Juke Seff’s slaughter of innocents.”

His face twisted in the very process of smiling. However, he managed—and just in time—to frown.

“One flight up,” he said curtly to Dolores. “Turn to the right and——”

“To the wrong, deary,” corrected the coiffed clerk. “Then go away, ’way back and down, down, down.”

Following directions, Dolores found herself in a large room which appeared to be a modified sort of office, furnished in gray wicker, with hangings of gray and purple chintz. As every chair and settee was occupied, she backed to the wall near the door. Surprised to see how many applicants had preceded her, she began to make comparisons.

Every shade of complexion, from ash blond to raven-brunette, was represented. Glancing among them, she might have envied some their loveliness and fashionable clothes, had she not so sincerely admired them. Like a flower garden the aggregation looked and smelled, every girl contributing her favorite color and perfume of sachet or extract to the steam-heated air.

With all her appreciation, Dolores’ heart grew heavy. Gone was her hope in the quiet distinction of her felt sailor hat, gone her assurance that the advertisement was the sign-board of Fate. Closer to the wall she shrank when, at precisely half-after-ten, Vincent Seff entered the room.